“Mother of Us All—” Tammis murmured, when he was finished.
“I’m sorry, Tammis,” Moon whispered, “to ruin your wonderful news.” She ; got up from her seat and crossed the room to him. BZ saw apology for far too many moments like this one fill her face, as she gazed down at her son. But she smiled all at once, the smile that BZ had always remembered. “I can hardly believe it,” she said, her smile widening. “Thank you for bringing hope back into this day.” Tammis rose from his chair, BZ watched them hold each other in the unselfconscious, loving way he had longed to hold the son he barely knew, as he saw the endless pattern of life unfold before his eyes. A child, he thought, was hope’s laughter in the face of existence.
“Do you think Da will be able to bring Ariele back?” Tammis asked, as she let him go at last.
“I don’t know.” Moon shook her head slightly, glancing at BZ.
“Can you help them?” Tammis said, looking at him too, following her gaze. “Can you send the Police?” “It isn’t that easy,” BZ answered. “But by all my ancestors, I’ll do everything I can.” He glanced away, at the open port in the waiting desk/terminal, and the secrets it refused to give up. “Tammis, do you now anything about—your father’s private file codes?” Asking, although he knew it was a futile question, knowing that Tammis and Sparks had never been close.
But Tammis nodded, looking curious. “He used to use runs of mersong.” He shrugged, at BZ’s look of surprise. “The only time we ever talked much was when I had something new I’d learned about the mers… .”He took a flute from the pouch at his belt; BZ realized that he always carried one with him, just as Sparks did. Tammis looked at the fragile shell for a moment, his gaze suddenly distant.
“What is it, Tammis?” Moon said softly.
He looked up at her. “I just wondered,” he said, almost inaudibly, “if Da would have gone after me.” He lifted his flute, coming toward the place where BZ sat now in front of the unresponding terminal. Tammis played a brief run of notes on the flute; there was no change. He tried another, and another. At last, after he had tried nearly a dozen, the empty face of the port suddenly came alive. The program opened its invisible gates, and data began to pour through.
BZ grinned in triumph, shared his smile for a moment with the boy standing beside him. He looked back at the screen, taking in its flood of symbols, using the techniques Survey had taught him to absorb a visual datafeed almost as rapidly as a direct link. The mersong as strands of fugue…
Music filled the air around him, as Sparks’s program reproduced the strands of a musical web and began to interweave them, while the mathematical equations defining the ever-changing ratios of sounds to one another filled the visuals, expressing relationships within the system. BZ sat, rapt, only vaguely aware of Moon and Tammis behind him as they spoke softly together, and then moved away to go on searching through Sparks’s possessions.
When he had witnessed the entire contents of the file, he requested it again, haunted by its configurations. Sparks had found a clue, he was sure of it … the mathematical structure of the music was a code, one that resonated in some part of his own brain, in the nonverbal depths of thought where the root of all music and mathematical perception lay.
He watched and listened to the webs of relationship form again on the screen, in the air, inside his mind; beginning to feel a kind of awe take hold of him at the subtle artistry of their creator. And he realized, suddenly, watching the screen, that the music itself was only a carrier: the mathematical information it contained was the critical element. And he knew the significance of those equations, those relationships flashing across the screen … he had worked every day for months on similar problems with Reede Kullervo, as they struggled to bring the stardrive plasma under control. The mathematics within the music had to do with the manipulation of smartmatter.
But there were gaping holes in the logic flow, where critical elements had been lost, destroyed along with the mersongs that had contained them. He saw Sparks’s tentative attempts to reconstruct the missing elements—the valiant efforts of an intelligent, resourceful mind that lacked the formal mathematical and programming experience to complete the revelation it had begun. An admiration for the accomplishments of Sparks Dawntreader that was not at all grudging filled him. He queried the computer, gave it another set of commands; sending the data into his own computer system with instructions to begin a series of transformational functions on it, to ask it the right questions …
“You’ve found something,” Moon said, behind him, and he became aware suddenly that she and Tammis had been standing there, watching him watch the screen for some time. “What is it?”
He looked up at them, letting her see the admiration still in his eyes. “Sparks found it,” he said. “The key to the mersong. It’s based in fugue theory—” He gestured at the book lying on the desk next to him. “The fabric of the music has mathematical equations woven into it. There is a pure mathematics to music, at the most basic level,” he said, seeing the uncomprehending looks on their faces. “Every tone lies in a precise, unchanging relationship to all others. Complex mathematical relationships can be expressed within the structure of a musical composition like a fugue, as if it were a sort of code. Sparks has laid out the basic structures—it’s all here. It deals with smartmatter manipulation. I’ve instructed my own computer system to run a program on it that should be able to recreate the missing segments, and then maybe we’ll finally be able to see what problem it exists to solve. …” He looked back at the screen, as the haunting sounds of the mers’ calling voices, synthesized but uncannily realistic, filled the air around him.
“You already know the answer,” Moon murmured, her voice barely audible above the music.
He turned to look up at her, saw her eyes shining with astonished vision. “What…?”
“The mers are coming toward the city,” she said. “There can be only one reason—” She broke off, her eyes finishing the thought her lips could not speak. It needs them.
His mouth fell open, as a circuit closed suddenly inside his brain, filling his mind with the light of revelation. “Smartmatter status maintenance …” he whispered. “Yes, by all the gods!” It needs them. He stumbled up out of his seat and took her in his arms. “It fits together!”
“What are you talking about?” Tammis asked. BZ looked at him, as Moon did, with useless apology. “We can’t explain it to you, Tammis,” Moon said, looking down. “Not yet.”
“But you think it will help Ariele?” he asked.
She looked back at BZ, and now it was her doubt and sudden desolation that were reflected in his own face. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “We have to believe it will.”
Moon shook off her mood, letting him go as she faced Tammis again. “It’s late…. Go home to Merovy, and give her my congratulations, and my love. “She smiled; the smile stopped. “But don’t tell her what we did here today, or why. Don’t tell anyone; please, Tammis.”
He nodded, his face intent. He embraced her one last time, in farewell.
“Thank you for your help,” BZ said, as the boy looked at him.
Tammis nodded again. “And thank you for yours,” he said, his voice husky. He turned away, starting toward the door.
Moon watched him go, with a forlorn, wondering expression. “Lady bless them,” she said, almost absently. She sighed, closing her eyes. “They say … they say the Mother loves children above all else. …” Her voice faded. “Lady help them alclass="underline" my children, and Yours.” She opened her eyes again; but there was no hope in them. She looked up at him. “Why did Tammis thank you?”